The Medici Court revived:
Isabelle de Borchgrave at the Medici PalaceFlorence,
March 14  June 14 2009

sent by: Rosalia Bonito Fanell:

Sleeping Beauty reawakens .

You may remember the fairy tale
about the Sleeping Beauty princess whose
royal court falls asleep and is revived from its cobwebby
past after prince charming kisses and wakes her up.

Isabelle de Borchgrave has done just
that to the MediciPalace.

This Belgian textile artist may
already be known to the general public for her
contemporary furnishings and print designs for Target,
Caspari, Gien and other well-known brands.

But there is another side to her
personality.she has created and perfected for over
a long period of timea unique technique with paper
and paints.With her Brussels studio-workers she
brings minutely-documented historic and fashion figures
back to full life-size using crumpled paper,
scissorsand paints.Literally an
embodiment of the past.

It all began twenty years ago when
she met the costumedesigner Rita Brown while
working in Toronto.

One thing I personally noted was
Isabelles minute transcriptions of
historically-patterned flat lace collars, cuffs and
stiffened ruffs.There is a long tradition of
Swiss, Austrian and Franco-Flemish (Belgian) paper
cutwork that goes back to the sixteenth and
seventeenth-century Habsburg Governance of Belgium. Both professional male and female workshops, but also the
mademoiselles who wiled away their time in castles and
palaces, cut by hand or with stencils ornate paperdecorations. And even in the New World  Mexico, Peru and
countless other Hispanic areas have this paper lacework
tradition.In fact, the next time you look at that
lace paper napkin under your cake remember that you are
enjoying a vestige (trace) of a past tradition.

In theMediciPalacedisplay Isabelle de
Borchgrave magically transforms these re-vived
personages into a world of fantasy.You move from
room to room  there are paintedbackdrop
decorations in the salons, sitting rooms, study,
diningroom  and we are greeted by generations of
the Medici family in historically-precise costumes: Lorenzo the Magnificent, bejeweled Eleonora di Toledo,
the elegantly-dressedchildren  winding down
the path of history to the last Medici in the eighteenth
century, AnnaMaria Luisa dei Medicim the Electress
Palatinate

However, these are not replicas
of times-gone-by  this was not Isabelle de
Borchgraves intention.

Some of you may have seen her work
at the recent New YorkFIT exhibition or in Paris, ''Papiers
a la Mode: Illusions of Fashion, or the Fortuny
Exhibition in Venice.

And now in Florence, after two and a
half years of preparation, twenty-nine life-size figures
from the Medici family history are on display in the same
palace where they once walked these very same rooms.

Her first inspiration came to her
many years ago from seeing the Benozzo Gozzoli chapel
frescoes on a student visit to Florence. This display
inaugurates the new exhibition space in the MediciPalace
- now opened to the public for the first time.And
Isabelle de Borchgraves richly dressed and
bejeweled Medici ladies and gentlemen and children invite
you into their palatial home ( to enjoy the setting?).

So Sleeping Beautys palace
reawakens  certainly a princely sight.

To sum up the more
technically related textile aspects of the
exhibition I noted the following four points in
particular:

De Borchgraves creations of
crumpled paper have a long textile tradition.

Firstly, paper was originally made
on frames as felt is.The contents of medieval
paper included cotton and linen rags and even woolen
lint.During the seventeenth-century there was
paper even made entirely of straw.

Isabella uses dressmakers
pattern paper and Japanese rice paper for the more
transparent veils.

Another old Renaissance Swiss and
Austrian traditional paper cutwork, called cadeit,
is the lacey paper cut-outs for the ruffs and flounces. In Monasteries and Convents nuns created saint images
with these lacey frameworks.And even the modern
paper doilies under pastries and cakes derive from this
tradition.

life-size effigies or mannequins to brighten up solitary dining halls and salons of
Baroque palaces and castles still exist internationally
in stately homes.So we find the Medici family
seated at a long trestle Renaissance dining table.

Lastly and perhaps closer to us in
time is the paper-simulatedjewelry, costume
jewelry.Coco Chanel certainly would have
been very much in favor of this ephemeral opulence . Maybe our next fashion trend?